In "soft" sciences like sociology, it's much more difficult to detect
manipulation of research, than in "hard" sciences like physics. Soft
science researchers who strive for objectivity deserve an extra
measure of respect. Sadly, far too many researchers are more
concerned with pushing an agenda than with objectivity. These same
problems are not unknown in the world of journalism.
Since the soft sciences and the media have a powerful influence on
social policies in this country, this affects every family and every individual.

is about the broken "science" that's being used
to create law and drive social policy.

On Dec. 8, 1980 I left Bloomington, Indiana (where I'd
briefly attended Indiana Univ.) bound for Berkeley, Calif.
I was about to get underway at just the time that the local
Contra Dance was ending, so I stopped by the local pizzeria
where everyone gathered after the dance to say one last
goodbye to my friends. As we talked, a news announcer broke
into the show on the television that was playing in the
corner of the room. He solemnly announced that John Lennon
had been shot to death by Mark David Chapman.

Around 11:00 PM, I hopped into my car, loaded down with
everything I couldn't ship UPS, and hit the road. For the
next five days, as I drove the 2,000 miles from Indiana to
California, every radio station on the air was doing
retrospectives of John Lennon's life. And they seemed to
play his Imagine about twice an hour.

The next day I picked up a copy of a newspaper in Iowa, and
the comic strip Blondie was the one shown below. It showed
one of that strip's standard gags – Dagwood's boss,
Mr. Dithers, tries to stand up to his wife on a fairly minor
matter (whether he should take time off work to go shopping
for drapes), and in the final 4 frames of the strip, Cora
Dithers chases her husband around the office, beating him
over the head with her umbrella handle. I was still grieving
my father, who had passed away about a year and a half
before. So I was hypersensitive to the bias in the comic
strip – bias because they'd never have dared to
portray a man beating a woman as humorous.

The two strains of thought intertwined – the
hopefulness of Lennon's Imagine and the hopelessness of my
childhood. I had nothing to do but keep the car between the
white lines on the road. So for five days straight, I had
all the time in the world to contemplate life, the universe,
and everything. At the end of that drive, as I approached
San Francisco, my radio was tuned to some talk-show station,
and the guest being interviewed was none other than Gloria
Steinem. She was going on and on, presenting a very biased,
one-sided view of domestic violence. I'd always been too nervous
to call in to a radio talk show before. But after five days of
my emotions swinging back and forth between hopefulness and
hopelessness, I knew I'd be stuck in hopelessness if I
didn't do something.

So I pulled over at a pay phone, called the show, and
actually got on the air. In a very nervous voice, I
described in gender-neutral terms, a relationship in which
whenever one member of a couple sat down to take a rest, the
other member of the couple would walk over, scream at them,
kick them repeatedly in the
shins, and call them lazy. I asked Ms. Steinem whether
she considered that to be domestic violence. Of course she
agreed that it was. I then told her that my mother had done
that to my father throughout my entire childhood and asked
her where someone like my father could find help. Suddenly
Steinem's voice turned cold. She weaseled out of it
somehow, hung up on me before I could utter another word,
and then her voice turned cheery again as she went on to the
next caller.

It had taken a huge effort on my part to overcome my fear
and actually call and speak over the airwaves to this famous
celebrity. And what it had accomplished was minuscule. But
more than anything else, I'd proven to myself that I could
take at least a baby-step in the direction of changing
things. And in doing so, I guaranteed that instead of
vacillating between hopefulness and hopelessness, I could
feel hopeful, at least for a little while.